Ventana shares rise on La Mascota drilling

Ventana Gold (VEN-T) has made one of its most significant drill intercepts yet on the La Bodega gold property 400 km north of Bogota, Colombia, where it’s just begun a scoping study on the La Mascota zone.

Assay results from hole 143, drilled in the La Mascota zone, returned 84 metres grading 13.66 grams gold per tonne starting at a depth of 239 metres.

At true width, the intercept is about 42 metres wide – the highest value true width intercept so far.

Ventana president and CEO, Steve Orr, says these drill results show that the southwestern portion of the structure is shaping up to be the most strongly mineralized in terms of grade and thickness.

“Hole 143 is one of the most significant drill intercepts to date and confirms the continuity of mineralization within the La Mascota zone,” Orr said in a statement. “We are confident this will significantly improve the overall grade and size of the deposit.”

In the same hole there was also an 18-metre intercept grading 3.63 grams gold per tonne starting at 117 metres depth, and 19.9 metres grading 4.02 grams gold starting at 192.9 metres depth.

Ventana had five drills active on the project during the month of September and has now drilled 3,100 metres at La Mascota. The company is still waiting for assays from 18 holes.

The project is located in the California-Vetas gold mining district in northeastern Colombia. Ventana has recently added claims to the property – the total size now is about 46 sq. km.

Ventana shares were up 25% today, or $1.61 to $8.05 apiece on a trading volume of 4.1 million shares. The company has 88.3 million shares outstanding and prior to today, had a 52-week trading range between 4¢ and $6.74.

The scoping study will focus on the La Mascota zone. La Mascota is a high-grade, northeast trending epithermal deposit that has been defined to a strike length of 800 metres and to a depth of 400 metres down-dip, though still remains open in all directions.

There is another known mineralized system on the property called the La Bodega zone. La Bodega, much smaller than La Mascota, is a porphyry style, near-surface deposit. The company thinks it’s an extension of Greystar Resources’ (GSL-T, GYSLF-O) massive Angostura gold-silver deposit.